


Together

by saucy5sauce



Series: together, somehow [2]
Category: Veep
Genre: F/M, In which Dan and Amy plan their wedding and it goes about as well as you'd expect it to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:52:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4311258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saucy5sauce/pseuds/saucy5sauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>to·geth·er<br/>təˈɡeT͟Hər/</p><p><i>adverb</i><br/>1.<br/>with or in proximity to another person or people.</p><p>2.<br/>at the same time.</p><p><i>adjective</i><br/>1.<br/>self-confident, level-headed, or well organized.</p><p>~<br/><i>In which Dan and Amy plan their wedding and it goes about as well as you think it would.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the least horrible

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So short story-- when I was planning **Hypotheticals** I realized that there was a very clear place for it to end.. with the engagement. But I didn't want to stop writing!! Hence...
> 
> PART TWO!!
> 
> The title is **"Together"** and it will feature Dan and Amy overcoming all sorts of challenges that come with a "happily ever after".
> 
> I hope you enjoy!! xox

### CHAPTER 1 : the least horrible

“Amy Elizabeth Brookheimer, will you marry me?”

Dan finds himself holding his breath. He feels his legs shaking and barely has time to register relief when Amy says, “yes.” And then again and again, “yes, yes, yes, I will!”

She pulls him to his feet and he pulls her into his arms. They kiss, but it’s sloppy and they are both crying and both grinning and everyone is laughing.

Later, Dan knows, they will relive this moment. They will always have this story to tell people, and it makes him feel slightly sick, because Amy will think she knows why he proposed.

She will think it was a political statement, strategically performed in front of the press and politicians. She will think that he proposed because that's what the relationship is for.

But Dan will know that he meant exactly what he said: _no matter what happens, he cannot imagine life without Amy._

 

* * *

 

Congratulations are in order. So, of course, Mike claps Dan on the back so hard that Dan wonders why he’s always thought he could Mike in a fight (he still probably could). Ben doesn’t get up from the couch, but gives the couple a thumbs-up. Selina hugs Amy in what was either the most touching or most embarrassing moment in Amy’s career, and then she marches off ordering someone to figure to tell her who won Wisconsin.

When it is revealed that she did win, everyone cheers. Out of courtesy (which Dan would have sworn none of them had), no one cheers louder than they did when Amy accepted Dan’s proposal (except for Gary and Selina and Karen and maybe Dan was right).

Karen is saying some shitty bullshit, but Amy isn’t even bothered. Dan traps her in his arms and all of a sudden, they are in their own world.

“Are you okay?” Dan asks. Then, his voice lower, “Are you happy?”  Amy has learned that the quieter he talks, the more important the question is to him. His deepest fears only come out when they are alone or feel as if they are.

She isn’t okay, not really. Because she’s engaged but that hasn’t changed _everything_. Because she’s still a workaholic. She’s always on the edge of a mental breakdown and her mother calls every other Tuesday to make sure she’s alive. Because she has reminders on her iPhone three times a day so she doesn’t stop eating again, and sometimes, her to-do lists are never-ending.

Amy is nowhere near okay. But she’s never been.

Happy, on the other hand, is something she has just started learning about. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember a time she was happy about something outside of work before she started letting Dan take her on fake dates and kiss her.

As an answer to both, Amy leans in closer to Dan and rests her head on his shoulder.

“I will be,” she says.

 

* * *

 

Amy swears that she has never been away from Dan as much as that night after they get engaged. Everyone allows them to slow-dance in the corner and wipe each other’s tears away, and then, just like that, Gary is grabbing Amy’s arm and Dan’s phone is ringing.

“Amy,” Gary says. “Amy!” he hisses. “Am- _my_!”

She turns to face him. “What the fuck, Gary? I’m with Dan.”

Gary makes a face. “I need to talk to you,” he says like it’s urgent. (Amy knows better. She knows that _that is just how Gary talks_.)

“Fucking rude,” Dan whispers in Amy’s ear. But his phone keeps ringing and they both know he wants to get it.

“I’ll see you in five minutes,” Amy says. He kisses her once and then she lets them be pulled away from each other.

As it turns out, Gary does not want to congratulate her.

Instead, Amy spend five minutes hearing him blubber about what he heard in the hallway, what he didn’t tell anyone he _swears_ but now they are engaged and Gary really thinks he needs to say something because he just couldn’t possibly _live with himself_ if he didn’t.

“Gary,” Amy snaps. “Stop rambling. Say what you need to.” She looks at her watch. “You have 15 seconds.”

When he just stares at her with wide eyes and his mouth open in a shocked O, Amy taps her heels.

“Go!”

“Just-- Are you sure about him, Amy?" he asks in his most twisted, high-pitched voice. "Are you like _sure_ sure?"

Amy doesn’t even have time to tell him to shove his head up his ass before Selina appears behind her and insults him herself.

"Oh shut up, Gary," she says. "They are the cutest couple since Romeo and Juliet!"

Once Selina says anything, the whole attention of the room is on focused to wherever she is.

Suddenly, Dan is beside Amy. She barely has time to think about why a wave of relief washes over her when he touches her arm, because Dan is already interjecting himself into the conversation.

"Both died, ma'am," he points out, one arm around Amy and one hand clutching his drink. "But thanks anyway."

That makes everything awkward, but at least they are together. At least Dan is no longer craning his neck and trying to spot Amy across the room. At least he can ease his nerves by making sure that she’s still wearing the engagement ring.

But then Selina says something about conceding and someone gives her a phone. In other words, all hell breaks lose. And Dan and Amy rush to different corners of the hotel suite to fix things.

And then, somehow, someone tells Jonah and he calls Dan and speaks _very loudly_ in confusing messages, never once saying “congratulations”. They aren’t friends, but still, Dan needs better friends.

 

* * *

 

Selina spends fifteen minutes with Catherine to get a break from the newscasts and the nerves. But then, of course, she needs a break from Catherine. So Amy gets called into the bedroom part of the suite.

“This is a nice hotel,” Amy says even though she booked the hotel and knew it would be.

Selina ignores her.

“The thing about men,” she starts saying, “Is that they are horrible. All men are awful, really.”

Amy awkwardly fiddles with her engagement ring.

“And the key is to just find a man who is the _least_ horrible.”

There’s that moment of silence after Selina finished talking before Amy realizes that she’s supposed to say something.

“Well,” she says, trying to sound sure, “I think I have.”

“Well then.” Selina pats Amy’s shoulder. “Congratulations.”

She’s the first one who has _actually_ said it. And Amy starts praying to whichever fucked up God might be watching over her, praying that in a few hours, she will be able to say the same thing to Selina.


	2. domestic policy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Selina loses and everyone has to move on. Gary goes on vacation with Selina, and Mike gets a job where his wife works, and Sue leaves without a word to anyone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is over 10 pages... I don't know whether to say sorry or you're welcome..?
> 
> lol, enjoy! ^.^

### CHAPTER 2

Selina loses. Everyone pretends to be surprised, but the people who worked on the Meyer campaign would have been more shocked if she had won, honestly. (It’s not that she could be a _bad_ president, it’s just that it’s probably better she _not_ become the most powerful person in the world.)

Selina loses and now everyone has to move on.

Gary goes on vacation with Selina. (Cue  jokes about how she probably made him pack and he probably climbed into her suitcase. Or about how she had to take him because otherwise, how would she be able to clean her hands after she took a shit? And who would flush the toilet? And more.)

Mike gets a job with his wife and two days later, both are considering a divorce. (“No one ever said Mike was bad at working,” Dan says, which makes Amy snort because she’s only said it a _thousand_ times. Dan continues, “But in all of history, no one has ever said Mike was _good_ at his job.” Amy can’t disagree.)

Jonah runs after President O’Brien’s Veep, with toilet paper stuck on his shoe and poppy seeds in his teeth. (“The whole world could change,” Amy says, “And Jonah would be still be showing up at the wrong time and annoying the shit out of everyone.” “Jonah’s will be Jonah’s,” Dan adds. “Cheers to hating Jonah!” They cheers.)

Ben and Kent and a bunch of other older, fatter guys retire. Dan drafts the appropriate cards and Amy signs them all without reading them. She’s already forgotten their names, and they are already thinking excuses to get them out of her wedding.

Sue leaves without a word to anyone. Which leaves everyone slightly insulted but not at all surprised.

As for Dan and Amy-- well, they are taking a break from work. Which means that Dan has two weeks of interviews lined up and Amy has politicians all over DC fighting over her (a list that may or may not include the new Veep and ten politicians dumb enough to be running for president in four years).

They move into their house and attempt to start wedding plans. It goes about as well as everyone expects it would-- which means it does not go well at all.

 

* * *

 

It is eight am and Amy is growling.

They moved into their house the day of closing, and Amy has already wasted two and a half days unpacking. Google and the fifty-some boxes she hasn’t opened yet say that it will take longer.

Amy thinks about calling Dan but decides that it will be better to wait. She can yell at him enough when he gets home. She twists her engagement ring and plunges her favorite kitchen knife into another box.

It’s books. (They have too many books. And Amy refuses to go to Ikea until they decide exactly how many bookshelves can fit into their makeshift library.) It’s books and Amy’s life has become so boring she’s thinking of setting something on fire.

When Dan gets home, Amy is playing with a match and an old law textbook.

“Honey, I’m home!” he calls out. ( _Ironically_ , of course. They play an old married couple almost as well as they play newly-engaged.)

Amy sprints out of the kitchen and lunges for Dan’s throat.

They fall to the floor in one loud crush. Dan worries that the floor is going to give out under him, but Amy is more concerned with making him feel the full force of her anger.

“You moved the dish towels,” she yells in his ear. “The one fucking thing I had put away, the one fucking thing that had a place!”

“Amy, what the fuck?” Dan tries to push away the screaming, crying woman off him. This is not the put-together, cunning and manipulative Amy that he has come to know and love. This is someone who would rather yell and cause physical pain than play the end-game. (Then again, it wasn’t like Dan had killed someone or anything.)

“It was the only thing I could find in this fucking house,” the woman sobs. “And you _moved them_!”

Dan’s eyes grow wide. He has seen Amy over-worked, has seen her yelling that DC is a shit hole that will shit you out (which happens roughly one a month, actually. He’s always thought it had something to do with PMS), has seen her go 48 hours with 2 hours of sleep.

But this. This is Amy without work. This is Amy given a task that she can’t figure out: housework.

She’s sitting against a wall with chipped paint, breathing heavily. (But at least she’s stopped trying to tackle him, Dan thinks.)

“I didn’t make dinner,” she sniffles. “How could I, when you moved the dish towels?”

Dan doesn’t have the heart to point out that dish towels are not necessary for cooking.

“I’m really sorry, Ames,” he says instead. “If I had known…” He doesn’t finish his sentence but they both know what comes next: _If I had known that you were going to go batshit crazy, I wouldn’t have. If I had known that your face turns purple when you cry, I wouldn’t have._

_If I had known how much I was going to disappoint you, I would never have considered moving anything._

“Moving is the second most stressful thing,” Amy says. “Second to only death.”

Dan puts his hands on her knees and stares into her eyes.

“Then it’s a good thing we are used to stress,” he says.

Amy nods.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says again. And Amy forgives him, lets him hug her and pull her to her feet. They order pizza and Dan runs out to get wine, then they eat on the floor of their empty living room, laughing about the newest gif of Mike that’s going around and the group of tall woman Teddy assaulted (including Jonah, of course).

They both fall asleep (on sleeping bags in the upstairs hallway, camping style, since all their sheets are at the dry-cleaners) smiling, and Amy forgot what a horrible morning she had. Somehow, Dan had made things alright.

 

* * *

 

Amy plans their Sunday’s off with the meticulous scheduling she learned from watching Sue. They have something scheduled from 8am until 10pm, down to the minute, and Amy has a separate list of tentative plans in case they have to replace an activity.

After a breakfast of leftover garlic knots in which they finish the 4-gallon iced tea from earlier in the week, Amy goes grocery shopping and Dan buys a toolbox complete with lots of things he does not know how to use.

From 10 to 10:15, they put wine in coffee thermoses and walk around the neighborhood, holding hands and waving to people sitting on their front porches. They arrive home with seven different phone numbers and three open invitations to “come over anytime”.

“High-five for schmoozing,” Dan says.

“We rock,” Amy says, and she doesn’t even sound that ironic.

They had it all lined up that day. They had alerts on their phones that said “It is 2:00. Go meet the neighbors.”

But that was not when they meet Pete and Rosa, the couple that would (basically) single-handedly fix every window, floorboard, and light that was messed up in Dan and Amy’s house. They meet them two weeks later, on a Tuesday morning when Dan is supposed to be at work Amy is scheduled to be stuck in traffic. (She’s lived in DC for years now. She’s learned that you gotta plan to be stuck in traffic.)

But Amy’s felt sick all week. And more than that, she’s tired of Dan telling her to “slow down, take it easy, stay home”.

“What are we, middle-aged?” Amy snaps at him. She’s leaning against the kitchen counter and rubbing her forehead with the ferocity of a toddler with a temper-tantrum.

Dan sighs. It hurts just to look at her, so obviously in pain. “You’re still deciding who to work for. If you can’t take a sick day now, you’ll never be able to.”

Amy is deciding between taking a position as the current Veep’s chief of staff or being campaigning for a couple different senators (“It will be like playing chess,” she explained to Dan, “the way I used to play it-- me against myself”). In the meantime, she’s working at the lobbying company Dan took a job with, making ridiculous amounts of money to transform their falling-apart house into something… more stable.

So Amy  isn’t stuck in traffic when she’s supposed to be. And Dan is home, too, because Amy took her sick day to mean a sex day, and he suddenly was extremely happy to stay home. Because of this, when two strangers find themselves with a flat tire and nothing to do but to knock on the door of the house on the corner of the black, someone is there to answer.

 

* * *

 

Amy’s first impression of Rosa is that she looks like she belongs in this neighborhood, like she probably has a wheelbarrow of happy toddlers behind her and a dog that walks without a leash. She thinks this bitterly, because every thirty-some wife that seamlessly fits into the neighborhood is a reminder of how Amy herself does not.

Rosa only lives up to that impression for a few seconds, right before she talks.

There is an awkward silence first, when Amy wonders if she greeted the stranger with a hello, and why she was expected to, anyway, when this was her house.

“I’m not from around here,” the stranger finally says.

Amy is surprised, but she works not to show it. Her poker face doesn’t last very long, though, because soon enough she’s crippled into a sneezing fit.

“Oh dear,” the stranger says. (If Amy weren’t sneezing and shuffling around for a kleenex, she would be rolling her eyes. Who the fuck says ‘oh, dear’?)

Amy doesn’t find a kleenex, but she manages to rip open a box of clothing and blow her nose gracefully on one of her dress shirts.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffs. “I’m sick.”

“I can see that,” the stranger says, smiling despite Amy’s obvious glare. “Here, let me help you.” And so she steps into the front room, navigates boxes and unbuilt furniture, and starts preparing Amy a cup of tea.

“Shit,” Amy says. (She’s really not at her best.) “You don’t have to do that.”

The stranger just shrugs, bouncing the tea bag (Amy didn’t even know she _owned_ any sort of tea bag) in a mug so that it will steep. “I get the worst colds,” she says, “and when Pete isn’t home, it’s impossible to get myself feeling better. Figured I’d help you out.”

Amy cannot remember the last time she drank something other than Perrier water and her signature order of a white-chocolate-mocha coffee with extra coffee and three shots of espresso. But when the stranger places a cup of steaming hot tea in front of her, she sips it and can’t help but let out a moan of pleasure.

“Thank you,” Amy says. “You’re amazing. And I don’t even know your name.”

The stranger lets out a little laugh, and Amy can’t help but think that even her laugh is cute, free and unbound, like the rest of her.

“I’m Rosa,” she says. “I was driving around the neighborhood-- this is my favorite neighborhood of all time, it’s just so cute, you know?-- and my car broke down. I was going to ask if I could borrow your phone and call my husband, but then it turned out that you needed _my_ help! Sometimes life is funny like that, isn’t it, giving you a flat tire so you can make tea for a nice woman like yourself.”

Amy blinks.

Rosa’s hand rises to her mouth in a gesture that isn’t familiar to Amy then, but that will become a part of her life, just as Rosa’s honey-fused tea will be.

“I talk too much,” Rosa says. “Everybody tells me that, but it’s hard not to, you know, when you have so much to say.”

Amy nods. She takes another sip of tea.

“Do you want to use my phone?” she asks, remembering the beginning of Rosa’s speech.

Rosa laughs and puts her hand on Amy’s arm. “I thought you’d never ask,” she giggles, and with every passing second, Amy can see more and more clearly what is so funny.

Amy tries not to listen into Rosa’s conversation, but it’s hard, when her new friend is so obviously doing most of the talking. She finishes by saying, “Okay I love you. Don’t interrupt me, babe, I was saying-- haha, even if you know what I’m going to say, you can let me say it, can’t you?-- I love you. Mmhmm, love you three.”

“You newly-wed?” Amy asks when Rosa returns.

“Nope, we’ve been married five years, together almost ten. High school sweethearts,” she explains, fiddling with the small diamond that sits on her ring finger.

Amy is almost self-conscious about her huge rock, which feels less impressive than Rosa’s decade-long love.

“I see you’re married, too,” Rosa says, grinning as if there could be no better news.

“Engaged,” Amy says. “Dan should be upstairs, somewhere, getting ready for an interview.”

“Oh!” Rosa wiggles her eyebrows. “He a fancy business man?”

And Amy finds herself simply saying, “Something like that.”

“I used to work as a caregiver,” Rosa says. “For the older folks, that is. I stopped when Pete and I started trying--” she takes a deep breath, “-- for a baby. Then a year ago I picked up a gig as a receptionist at Pete’s construction company. Saving for our move to a house like this one.”

“Um,” Amy says. Then, because she doesn’t know what else to say, “Do you want a tour?”

“I’d love nothing more,” Rosa beams.

And so Amy leads her through the house, offering little stories with every room. There is the dining room where Dan wants to host politicians and show off his whiskey collection, the room without windows which they are planning to make a library, the hallway up the stairs where Amy admits she wants to hang pictures of her family the way her mother always had. Rosa smiles and laughs in the right places, and she almost tears up when Amy tells her of the fight over her childhood bed.

“It looks absolutely perfect there,” Rosa says, and Amy feels even more fond of this stranger.

After a tour of the whole house, minus the bathroom where Dan is showering, Rosa asks to see pictures of Amy with her “marvelous fiance”.

“I imagine him as very ambitious,” Rosa declares, “Buying a house like this, which, pardon my language dear, needs some work.”

“Well,” Amy says, “we both are. Ambitious, that is.” She pulls up a picture on her phone from the last campaign dinner Selina hosted. There is one that a photographer took, of Dan standing with his hand around Amy’s waist as they study a spreadsheet that Rosa is impressed with, but the one she thinks is ‘better because it’s just so much more real, you know’ is a selfie Amy took of them after getting ready. In it, they are both sticking out their tongues and their faces are pressed **together** side-by-side.

“Adorable,” Rosa says just as Dan calls out, “Amy!”

Amy looks at Rosa apologetically  


	3. together, in albany

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"People are going to be suspicious if we invite your parents to the wedding and I haven’t met them.”_   
>  _“People can think whatever the fuck they want,” Dan says, but they both know better._   
>  _They won’t say it anymore, but they are still playing a game of lies._

### CHAPTER 3: together, in Albany

There is a streetlight outside of the room that Amy has told Dan is his, and no matter how hard he tries, he cannot sleep with it shining in his eyes.

Dan sleeps in socks and boxers, and this is how he appears when he knocks on the master bedroom door at midnight.

“I have a gun!” Amy calls from inside. There is a crash and she curses.

Dan pushes open the door, and holds his hands above his head. “Please don’t shoot me, Ames.”

“Oh, it’s just you.” It takes Dan’s eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness of the room (no fucking _streetlights_ in here, that’s for sure). Amy is standing next to the bed, surrounded by broken glass.

“Who did you think it was?” Dan says, leaning against the doorframe and laughing despite himself.

Amy sighs. “I don’t know. I’m just used to living alone I guess.”

Dan nods. “Well,” he says, “What are you going to do about all that glass?”

Amy glares at him and he holds his hands up again.

“Kidding! I’m kidding! I’ve got this.”

He crosses the floor in his socks and picks Amy up bridal-style. They have been close before --they’ve even slept **together** like, last week-- but there’s something about having Amy snuggled into him that makes Dan feel like he’s dreaming.

Dan puts her down on the left side of the bed, tells her that he likes the right side better.

Amy sits cross legged and gives him a tough look.

“Who says that I’m not sending you back to the other room?”

“You would to brave the glass pieces,” Dan points out. He sits down on the bed and Amy does nothing to chase him out.

“I feel like we’re teenagers,” Amy says quietly.

“Did you have a lot of teenage boys sneaking into your room?” Dan asks.

Amy blushes. “No, of course not. But you make me nervous sometimes, you know that? I feel like we should be playing truth or dare or something.”

“Do you want to?”

“No, I kind of just want to sleep.”

“So let’s sleep.” Dan fluffs a pillow and crawls under the covers. Amy follows him, and somehow ends up with her feet pressed against Dan’s legs.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says.

Dan turns to face her-- their lips are inches apart, now.

“Don’t be,” he says.

“As much as I don’t like you,” Amy mutters, “I’m afraid I’m kind of in love with you.”

Suddenly, Dan is grinning and kissing her forehead.

“I love you too, babe.”

Amy sighs, already half asleep. “I hate you, Dan,” she mutters.

But Dan won’t let it go. “No you don’t,” he says. “You _love_ me.”

“Shush, I’m just in love with you. I probably won’t be in the morning.”

“I love you too,” Dan says again. They are properly cuddling now, and he can feel every breath that Amy takes.

“You just hate sleeping in the guest room.”

“Maybe,” Dan admits, “But I also really like waking up next to you.”

 

* * *

  
“You know what this means,” Amy says one evening as Dan mixes margaritas and she stacks boxes to sit on. “This means that I’m going to have to meet your parents.”

Dan not-so-delicately stirs the drinks.

“Don’t break the glasses,” Amy says. “They are the only one I’ve unpacked as of yet.”

There are piles of boxes, each with black sharpies labels: **Dan** and **Amy**. To  say that their stuff doesn’t match is a huge understatement.

Dan’s furniture is sleek, modern, and mostly glass. Amy doesn’t have much furniture, but everything she has is from her childhood home and is dark oak wood.

They have only fought once over a piece: the bed. Ever since the engagement (and the post-engagement sex), they have been sleeping in the same bed without a word. The master bedroom is the only room in the house that isn’t obviously falling apart, and Dan doesn’t feel any need to let Amy out of his sight.

The minute Amy saw the room, she could picture her classic bed with its carved bed frame. It took two days of subtle arguing, but Amy finally won with a compromise that includes letting Dan pick all other bedroom furniture (more glass tables than anyone needs and a mirror above their bed, which Amy grows to like) and all the linens (which means that every sheet, blanket, and pillow is white and “sleek-looking”).

The kitchen might be the room that is the least unpacked. Both neat-freaks have resigned themselves to the chaos of their favorite room. A streetlight from outside seems to be punching light right into Amy’s eyes as she tries to get a reaction out of Dan about his parents. She starts considering curtains, something to match the walls, which are a newly painted blue.

“What are your parent’s names?” Amy asks.

Dan starts to chug his margarita. “No comment,” he says.

“I see I’ve hit a nerve.”

“More like you shot me, and in the process, a nerve was hit.”

“Well,” Amy says, “We are flying up to New York this weekend. I’ve already bought tickets and I moved your scheduled interviews.”

Dan is shaking and Amy wonders why, through elections and press nightmares, she has never seen him this mad.

She puts her hand on his cheek and forces him to look in her eyes. “Dan, it’s going to be okay. People are going to be suspicious if we invite your parents to the wedding and _I haven’t met them_.”

“People can think whatever the fuck they want,” Dan says, but they both know better.

They won’t say it anymore, but they are still playing a game of lies.

 

* * *

 

Dan has a list of things that he didn't know about Amy before.

Like that she wears contacts, which he's considering throwing away because she still has the same glasses she wore in college and they are everyone nerdy fantasy he’s never had come true.

Like that Amy takes a long time to sneeze, that her whole body crunches up and she inhales for a few seconds before coming out with the teeniest sneeze ever. And Dan seriously thinks that he will never stop laughing.

Before, he didn’t know that on lazy weekends around the house, she chooses to wear leggings and a knit sweater with nothing underneath. That she already has clothes designated for painting and getting messy, big shirts from ex-boyfriends that make Dan’s stomach twist in jealously.

When they fly to Albany, Dan finds many things to add to his list: That Amy, who is never late, frets so much about being on time for her flight that she literally cannot sleep the night before. That Amy stays sober while flying (Dan has always liked to enjoy airport whiskey) in case the plane crashes and she’s left to survive in the wild. That Amy, who loves to tell people that she’s fearless, is terrified of flying.

He holds her hand on take-off, while she sits rigid and tense. When the plane is “approaching 10 000 feet” and the flight attendants start to walk around again, Dan expects Amy to let go and start working.

Instead, she leans against his shoulder and closes her eyes.

“You were always find on Air Force Two,” Dan points out.

“Because only the best pilots can fly the Vice-President around. And still, I’d always throw up in the bathroom during take-off,” she admits.

Dan strokes her hand with his thumb. “Well, you made it today.”

Amy smiles slightly. “I guess I did.”

 

* * *

 

Amy falls asleep before landing, and Dan ends up being the one who feels queasy. But it has less to do with the plane and more to do with where they are landing.

Albany, land of snow and ice hockey. Land of summer sailing lessons and Dan’s childhood memories, all of which included disappointing his father in some why.

Needless to say, he hadn’t visited in-- a few years, if he counted right. The last time, his father asked Dan if “he was a lawyer yet”, like he honestly expected Dan went to law school and changed his whole life in one year. Dan’s mother had shushed his father, if he remembered right, and told Dan that he was “doing fine” in her eyes. At that point, he had been working with a congresswoman and dating her daughter-- doing better than just fine.

Dan wondered what they’d make of Amy. She was asleep on his shoulder, looking like a perfectly adorable fiance. He wasn’t superstitious (he’d leave that to his sisters), but he found himself crossing his fingers, hoping that they would at least make it out of Albany alive.

* * *

It’s not like Dan _expected_ his parents to be waiting for them at the airport. But it would have been nice.

Amy deals with the situation as professionally as she deals with everything, calling a taxi company and saying that she’d pay cash if they can “get their ass to the airport before she freezes to death”.

She proceeds to go to a little gift shop.

“It’s freezing as fuck,” Amy announces, looking through the mittens and gloves for sale. “Which is better?” she asks.

“The ones without individual fingers,” Dan says. “Not that I know which that is.”

Amy nods. “Winter is kind of a pain, don’t you think?”

Dan doesn’t laugh. “So was growing up in upstate New York.” (He tries to remember what he did with the gloves and hats he used to have-- did he burn them? He thinks that he probably did.)

“What sports teams do your parents like?” Amy asks while looking at hats.

“Rangers,” Dan answers without thinking. “Wait, why?”

But Amy has already bought matching winter hats and mittens with the hockey team’s logo. Dan realizes that she is insistent on impressing his parents, and his heart sinks. _They are going to disappoint her_ , he thinks, _just like they did to me_.

Then: _But it really wouldn’t be so bad if she could impress them._

He decides to let her try. After all, Amy has always been able to surprise him.

* * *

Amy has decided that she isn’t going to waste the weekend, that she won’t let it pass without working. So before she left, she went to a wedding store, made a grand To Do List and bought a wedding notebook.

She pulls it out in the cab, along with a little golf pencil. Dan wonders if there’s anything she _hasn’t_ thought of.

“You need to pick a best man,” Amy says. “Your brother, maybe?”

Dan’s jaw clenches. “Um,” he says, because really, how does one say this?

“I’m not a good person,” he starts.

“Yeah,” Amy nods, before realizing that that is not the appropriate answer from one fiance.

“Um, okay.” Dan continues. “I’m not a good person and I might have slept with my brother fiance.”

Amy winces. “Ouch.” She crosses off something in her notebook.

“On his wedding day.”

Amy just stares. The cabbie starts making some kind of disgruntled noise.

“Let me get this straight.. you _fucked_ the _bride_ of your _brother_?” Amy pauses for dramatic effect. “On their _wedding day_?”

“Yes. I’m a bad person. And that’s one of the reasons why my family hates me. But don’t worry, they made their minds up about that long before I did anything bad.”

Amy takes Dan’s hand. “I’m going to say one more things and then we aren’t going to talk about this anymore, because I don’t think I want to.”

Dan nods.

“If you ever do anything that low again -and don’t pretend like you don’t realize exactly how bad that is- I will kill you. If you think I care about being president one day too much to ruin it, you are wrong. Because if your morals fail you like that again, Dan, the only thing I will care about is ruining you. _Understand_?”

It’s threat that would make anyone scared. And it scares Dan, it definitely does. But when Amy goes back to responding to Selina and Mike’s many emails, mumbling something to herself about “the fucking incompetence in this country”, Dan smiles to himself. Because Amy, without meaning to,  just admitted that they are in a real relationship. Dan doesn’t know when that happened (maybe with the house, or with the engagement. Hell, maybe the first time he laid eyes, they were both destined to end up **together** ), but he knows how he feels about it.

Somehow, (regardless of the threats or the looming door as the cab gets further into Albany) he’s never felt happier in his life.


End file.
